Overstaged

Well, Beyonce has the single, Dido has the credibility. Last time around Beyonce had a #1 with her lead single (Deja Vu) and the album sold a crappy 35k in its opening week, and dropped to # 19 in its second week. Later, with the second single "Irreplaceable" the album climbed a bit back again but still its final sales weren´t anything but mediocre. I was also thinking Dido would flop, but given the pre-orders and its position on big online retailers, I guess she will easily go Top 5 at least, which won´t be bad considering its lack of promo. Artists like Britney and Beyonce wouldn´t score a Top 40 entry with an album promoted this badly. I guess credibility is a factor that counts a lot... I mean, Beyonce sells on the basis of her hugely popular singles, but she hardly has any musical credibility, does she??? This means she will vanish as quick as the hits stop coming. Only credible acts can sell well even when their singles are not being played anywhere. I forgot to add to the list also the re-issues of Leona Lewis and Duffy. Both are going to be big.

Because gays must have suffered prejudice, and now some of them like Russt seem to want to transfer it to other groups, like christians and blacks. It´s clearly irrational, but these loons always need an expiatory group to put all the blame on, pretty much like mediavallers blamed witches for anything, from diseases to natural catastrophes, now it´s "religion" who is to blame for anything bad happening in the world. These arguments are so stupid and coming from people so ignorant that makes me think it´s not even worth battling for this... How ironic it is, that the current "darling" of all liberals in America, Barack Obama, is a black person and a christian one. LMAO. Not just a Christian, but a practicing pentecostal one... I just have to laugh my entire arse off at people like Russt putting all their hopes in a guy that is at the same time, black and christian, the 2 things that he seems to hate the most. That´s totally ironic...

I didn´t change my nickname to hide myself, as if I needed to, and I stand by every word I say. I am not an homophobe and everyone who says that is idiot, for simply not knowing that "homophobia" means.

And should I remember Kanye West is a devote Christian who even puts Jesus and stuff in his lyrics (which would be considered career suicide by most pop acts today)???? However, nobody seems to bother it.... Once again, the impartial hate campaign towards christianity on this forum only looks the bad side... They would never remember Kany West is a Christian, and so is Bono and many other popstars who give a far better role model for youth today then any of these idiotic barbie dolls who do nothing but show their uteros on MTV and worry about nothing other then their clothes and cars. Nobody will remeber Martin Luther King was a Christian either, and a pastor. I doubt that anyone that commits crimes against gay people or those "artists" who write lyrics inciting violence are seriously Christian, and if they are, surely they cannot feel like they have "the Church" on their side. For instance, the Catholic Church is one of the few that even protests against capital punishment in America, even concerning serial killers and stuff. I doubt they´d support killing a person for being homossexual. :unsure: They might have done it in the past, but welcome to the 21st century.

Since when calling something wrong can be "homophobia"??? It´s just a basic human right... For instance, I DO think that homossexuality is wrong and that doesn´t have anything to do with religion at all. Just basic biology. I don´t protest in front of gay people and don´t humiliate them, don´t deny their rights, etc, and in fact if I lived in USA I´d even vote for their right to get married. However, my personal opinion about it CANNOT be considered a crime, nor does the legislation of any country say this. You´re totally out of mind if you think having a negative opinion about homossexuality defines "homophobia". Homophobia is not directly related to religion and that is pretty much a fact. The fact that most members of hate groups who kill homossexuals today are not religious and are heavily inclined towards nihilistic atheism/agnosticism is a big proof of it. However, just be blind if you wish so... People need to create an imaginary enemy to fight against.

No I don´t, because to me, it´s a fact... Sorry if you disagree. There are 2 points about this I´d like to write down. 1) Thinking that the anus is not made for sexual purpouses and that relationship between people of oposite sex is the ideal marriage, for being the one that allows our species to exist among other things, is not homophobia. It´s just opinion, that we have the right to voice whenever we want. If you want to call religious people (at least, the majority of them) homphobic for disagreeing with homossexuality, so in your words it´s you who should "shut the f*** up", for having no clue of what´s homophobia. If that was inciting hate towards gay people or banning them to exercise their rights, then I´d agree it was homophobia. But simply having a negative opinion about it IS NOT. It´s a basical human right to have opinions and voice them. 2) You don´t like to be impartial, really. Just like you always state that religions cannot get the merits of inventing morals (like loving each other, not killing, not stealing, etc), because they were pre-existent and indepent of religion at all, you should (if you were impartial and coerent, which seems you´re not...) admit the same about the general religious dislike of homossexuality. It was pre-existent to religion and independend of it. People do not believe homossexuality is wrong because it´s written on their holly books, but actually the other way round: the "holly" books were written that way because that is what people believed by the time they were written.

Here is the list of releases for that week: 3 biggest contenders: Beyonce - she´s been exposed pretty much everywhere and is on the back of a hugely sucessful lead single... Nickelback - Coming from a hugely sucessful album, which despite being released years ago, only took off in UK since one year or so. Dido - coming from one of the most sucessful albums of the decade, but after a 5 years break and a lead single that is so far, the least sucessful of all (peak # 54). Has the advantage of being higher on pre-orders, tough. Will Beyonce build on the sucess of the hugely sucessful single that sold more then 60,000 copies on downloads alone??? Will Nickelback keep their momentum in Uk and score a #1 album??? Will Dido´s fanbase be strong enough to hit #1 despite the lack of airplay and the flop of Don´t Believe In Love in the charts??? Or will an outsider end up higher then the rest?

Has anyone catch her performance on Ellen Degeneres tonight???? She´s doing a lot in the USA... Jay Leno, Regis & Kelly, and now Ellen, not to mention some radio stations she´s visiting and a listening party she´s giving for american fans. It´s still a mistery why she just disappeared from her own country, which always was her biggest market. Life For Rent sold 2.1 million copies in USA, vs. 2.9 million in UK. Considering the UK population is just 1/4th of the USA, that means she is A LOT bigger in the UK...

How much % of UK population is black??? I suppose it´s nowhere near as much as in America, which makes things a lot harder.

It seems that you completely changed your speech. Cause in other topic you freaked out about a statement that gay people are less likely to be interested in football then straight males, or they were more likely to be fans of singers like Madonna. How ironic...

I don´t believe it has anything to do with their race, let alone their religion... Surely the majority of the people who buy records from people like 50 Cent (who openly dislikes gays) is not black. Rappers like him sell to white teenagers as much as they do among black people. What about Eminem :puke2: , a white icon in rap who was openly homophobic? I take it Eminem wasn´t a black person or a fervorous religious guy??? That just blows up your prejudices and stereotypes. Plus, it´s a bit contradictory that you claim the cause of homophobia in black comunities is religion... Surely the stereotyped people you and russt picture going to a ragga/dancehall club, won´t be going straight to a church the following sunday. Are artists like 50 Cent and his crew, who openly defends prostitution and drugs, really that much influenced by a religion? I don´t think so. I´d like those stats from the election´s polls to say something about religion of the voters in the referendum... Some people here would be surprised at the amount of nonreligious/atheist/agnostics that should have voted yes. I know for a fact that communist Russia was an atheist government and it didn´t treat gay people any nicer. And as I come from a german descent community in Brazil, I know that neo-nazists sympathizers are overwhelmingly atheists. Of course they hate jews and muslims for racial causes, and Christianity cannot be taken serious for worshipping a jewish guy. They hate jews as much as they hate gay people, and that includes the most famous of all jews ever. I´d say if you´re a gay person walking in the streets you are most likely to be beaten by an atheist then by a religious person. Neonazist groups are the ones who cause most trouble in this field, and here and there you hear some news about them killing someone for being jewish, gay, or punk... Yet I´m still to hear anything about evangelicals or catholics atacking gay people in the streets. No word about Mormons, tough. They are less then 7 million people in a country of 300 million inhabitans... Surely, their vote couldn´t have been so decisive in this question? Altough I have to agree they have a big history of institutionalized prejudice, since a few decades ago they wouldn´t even accept a black person as a human being, and now they grow very quick among black comunities, what a irony.

Hate speech has just started... I think it´s bizarre that in many countries were civil gay marriage is still not allowed, you have gay marriages in churches. The Episcopal Church in America has a married gay men as a bishop. Cases like this are countless in other mainline protestant churches in America and Europe. I think in pretty much any country you had a gay marriage in a Church easier then a civil gay marriage. Yet you prefer to link homophobia exclusively to religion for 2 basical facts: first, not bothering really questioning and studing it, and second, your explicit hate for all religious people and your intolerant prejudice.

Yes, it is, but it´s easy to notice that, for russt generalizations and prejudice aren´t acepted only concerning gay people. Considering all other groups in society, it´s okay, and his posts are full of this all the time. I think it´s bizarre how he didn´t notice that in America, black people are average much poorer then white people, and that consequently means they are submited to a worse educational system as well, just like latins overall. But he prefers to link the homophobia to a skin colour, instead of socio-economic reasons. A shame.

I bet that he wants to, but he can´t cause if he openly defends gay marriage he would lose a big part of his voters. America is still very conservative.

Is it allowed in the USA to track people´s race, gender and convictions in elections or referedums??? I find that quite bizarre since in most democracies the vote is absolutely secret. Or are these unofficial stats??? Acording to the first post on this topic, 52,5% of the people overall voted "yes", yet acording to your stats, only 52% of heterossexuals voted yes. So this means that homossexuals and bisexuals voted "yes" in a bigger proportion then heterossexuals?

This era is dead before it even starts...

I also love the album. My favourite track is "Northern Skies". It´s such a perfect ending for this album. Dido has kept the tradition to put a great and extense track to close her album again! There are some tracks I admit are just "average". I´d say Quiet Times, and mainly Look No Further... The latter one is kinda boring, and when I heard it for the first time when it was given for free on her site I was afraid I wouldn´t like her new material at all. But then this album is full of great songs, apart from that.

Still nothing in the UK, tough... I remeber in the weeks leading to the Life For Rent release, her older album (No Angel) had re-entered the official charts and jumped Top 20 in the week of the release, the song was being played everywhere and White Flag was massive. The album itself broke records for pre-orders on amazon. Now I noticed her album is out in just 1 week and it´s only #24 on amazon, while the Killers, who release 1 week later then her, are already #2... Not to mention the single debuted only at #54 and has disappeared from itunes Top 120 since many days... OUCH!!! I can´t help thinking this is almost the same that happened with Anastacia. In fact, DBIL charted a bit higher then I Can Feel You, but it also had a physical release. If it was download only, maybe it would have been even lower or not even charted??? It is confirmed that Dido will remain in the USA the whole week, she´s doing more TV appearences and visiting radio stations... that means there will be nothing in the UK still. It sucks. This album is officially going to flop. How on earth could she be that stupid? Everyone was talking about this having one of the biggest opening weeks of the year, but now I think I´m happy if it even goes Top 10...

All they need to do is put an advert on the main page for Duffy and the Killers... Anything new from a stablished artist sells when it has an advert, no matter what the track is. But the Killers is listed with some 4 older tracks in the Top 120... I suppose when it´s out, their album will have the biggest opening week of the year by far...

It makes no sense, cause the songs would still leak ilegally before they release. Once they´re sent to radios it´s impossible not to find it on P2P. Even if it kept the song from leaking, once it was sent to download on sites like itunes, it would still leak in a matter of hours. People who pay for downloads only pay because they want it, cause otherwise it would be really easy to get it for free. The digital singles market is currently huge and it depends exclusively on the good will of consumers.

44k worlwide in its first week, acording to mediatraffic. The estimation should be right, considering she is respectively # 13 and #17 in the countries that used to be her biggest market (Germany and UK), and only went to 10 in very small markets such as Spain and Switzerland, were I supposed you can get a Top 10 album with less then 3,000 copies. That´s awful. I was thinking she would sell this much in UK or Germany alone, but for worldwide it´s a DISASTER!!! I remember her 3rd album sold more then 100,000 copies in its debut week in Germany alone, and if I´m not mistaken that was a record for a foreigner female artist there... All of her albums had been MASSIVE in Germany. To debut at #13 is really the worst possible result I could ever expect... I hope she releases something good for the next single and saves the album!

Next week she will be on Craig Kilborn on 10, and Ellen Degeneres on 12... Looks like finally she is making people aware that she´s back. I hope she does the same in Europe too. So far, the only promo she did in Europe was a small interview on a German station and a live performance on a french station... To travel that far to just be interviewed by a radio station is such a waste.

Here it is. She´s just performed today in USA TV show: http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/buenavist...eo_archive.html

My favourite Dido song is: "Take My Hand". Because it´s perfect. My least favourite is "Look No Further"... pretty much a filler.

Considering the huge 1st week sales of Hero, I suppose even if it drops 70% in its second week it will still keep everything else off the top... Lol, it would be so amazing.